Hey, Dave here in your inbox again One of the biggest challenges we hear from marketing leaders is balancing short term projects vs. long term projects. The work that will pay off immediately and help you hit the number this month (direct response), this quarter vs. the foundational work that might take not make an impact until later (things like SEO or brand building). But this is one of those "the obstacle is the way" scenarios. The only way to achieve sustainable, long term growth is to - at some point - start investing in long term projects. What if we never decided to start a podcast (Seeking Wisdom) at Drift, because we weren't sure how it would impact sales? How does a podcast about personal development help sell marketing software? Well, it turns it: the podcast built a connection with our audience, it helped people get to know us, it built affinity for our brand. It put us on the map. It got people paying attention to us. And we earned the right to then sell something to that audience later. The only way to balance short term vs. long term goals is to have a clear strategy and a vision for where your business is going. If you know what you'll need to do in the future then you can make smart bets now and start to lay the right foundation - even if they do not pay off immediately. At Drift we knew we needed to build a brand and build affinity to standout in a sea of 10,000 martech vendors. So building a podcast that had nothing to do with marketing actually fit perfectly into that strategy. If you're building a high volume PLG business and traffic will be a key factor to your growth (ex: you have a freemium video recording tool that you want to be adopted by individuals inside companies) then you'll need to start building a foundation for SEO and investing in website content now -- even though that work might not help you hit your goal this month. To hit this month's goal you'll have to do targeted outreach and focus more on short term, direct response channels -- but you still need to build that foundation for SEO for long term so 12 months from now when you need 1,000 new signups instead of 100, you'll be able to get there. I've found that most often when marketing teams struggle with short term vs. long term priorities it's because there is no clear strategy, and there's no clear strategy because the company lacks vision, a clear roadmap, and there's either a disconnect or the team is not bought in. When everyone knows the long term vision then figuring out how to balance short term and long term growth is no problem. At Drift year one we saw how "live chat" on the website with one case (sales) could eventually become "conversational marketing" and a new way to do marketing in year 2-3-4-5, etc. and you build and deliver on that vision over time. P.S. How do you balance short and long term strategies? Is it an issue in your company? Reply back and let me know :) |
